Suspicion is an important element of the movie-watching experience. We engage with the plot by developing reasoned pre-conclusions about how events will unfold. We make assumptions before the truth is revealed. But for Lina Aysgarth (Joan Fontaine), a wealthy ingenue gripped by a growing fear that her playboy husband Johnnie (Cary Grant) is planning to murder her for her life insurance policy, suspicion is synonymous more with the terror of presumed inevitability than with the anticipation of knowing. Suspicion, however, cautions us to be ever mindful of all eventualities when solving a case.

Although perhaps not as well-remembered as Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, or Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious is one of his most brilliant films, presaging the director’s immediately recognizable visual style that would flourish in the 1950s. Interestingly, it is also one of the earlier films in which Hitch employs a romance as bait to lure audiences in with his characteristic irony.